Can you advertise on ChatGPT?

How do ChatGPT ads work?

OpenAI started testing ads in ChatGPT in the US on February 9, 2026, with a small group of large advertisers. On May 5, 2026 it opened a self-serve Ads Manager (still labeled beta) to “companies of all sizes, from SMBs and startups to global brands,” and has since expanded it to many more countries. You sign up at ads.openai.com. Setting up a campaign looks like this:

1. Create and verify the account. Register the business, pass verification and add billing.
2. Build a campaign. Choose an objective, a budget, dates and the locations you want to reach.
3. Add ad groups with “context hints.” Short descriptions of the kinds of conversations where your ad would be relevant.
4. Write the ads. Each one has your business name, a headline, a description, an image and a landing page.
5. Submit for review. Ads run only after OpenAI approves them.

Where the ad appears. In OpenAI’s words, “Ads can appear below the end of a response. Ads are clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from ChatGPT’s response.” A single ad unit can hold items from one advertiser or several.

Who sees it. People on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts see no ads, and neither do accounts identified as belonging to someone under 18. Temporary Chats show no ads, and free users can switch to an ads-free option in exchange for fewer messages. OpenAI also keeps ads away from sensitive conversations, such as personal health, mental health and politics.

How does targeting work? Can you target your area?

ChatGPT ads are not keyword ads. Your context hints guide matching, but OpenAI says they are not exact match and don’t guarantee your ad shows in any particular conversation. The system looks at the current conversation, your ad and landing page, and, for users who leave ad personalization on, their past chats and past interactions with ads.

Location targeting is real. Beyond picking a country, you can target “states or regions, cities, markets, and postal codes where available.” That makes a single town, a metro area or a handful of ZIP codes a workable target, wherever your customers are. Two limits: availability varies by location, so search for yours during setup, and shopping-style product-feed campaigns can only target whole countries.

Advertisers never get users’ chats, chat history, memories or personal details. You see aggregated results: impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average cost per click and per thousand views, and conversions if you install OpenAI’s pixel or Conversions API.

What does it cost to advertise on ChatGPT?

There is no platform fee and no account-level minimum. You pay for results in an auction, and the structure is published:

From OpenAI’s Ads Manager help pages, read September 26, 2026. The $3 to $5 figure is a suggested starting bid, not an average price.

What advertisers report paying. These are early numbers from a young platform. Search Engine Journal (September 8, 2026) described one e-commerce test that spent $9,620 at a $4.41 average cost per click. MediaPost (August 28, 2026) reported an agency test at about $7 per click. Neither is a benchmark, and OpenAI itself “does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries or campaign types.”

Which businesses can advertise on ChatGPT?

Most can. OpenAI names local services, retail and household goods, travel and experiences, and digital products and education among its supported categories. A few areas are limited or closed:

• Health and finance are partly restricted in the US. Some categories, like cosmetic procedures, dietary supplements, deposit accounts and auto loans, are allowed. Others, like hospitals and urgent care, mortgages and credit cards, are open only to select approved advertisers for now. Telehealth, prescription drugs and payday loans are not allowed.
• Law firms are allowed in the US when the firm is licensed to practice law where the ad is shown.
• Not allowed: cannabis and THC products, alcohol, tobacco and vaping, gambling, dating and adult content, political ads, and individual job or housing listings.

The rules have changed several times this year, so check OpenAI’s ad policies before you plan a campaign. This is general information, not legal advice.

Does paying for ChatGPT ads get you recommended?

No. An ad buys the box under the answer, not the answer. OpenAI’s help center is direct about it: “Ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers. Ads run on separate systems from our chat model, and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT’s responses.”

That makes ads a complement to organic AI visibility, or a stopgap while you build it, never a substitute. A business that ChatGPT names gets that exposure for free. One that isn’t named can, at most, buy a labeled box under a competitor’s recommendation. Getting named is its own job, covered in how to get ChatGPT to recommend your business, and it’s what our AI search optimization work is built around. New to the terms? Start with AEO vs. SEO.

How are ChatGPT ads performing so far?

It’s early, and the public numbers are thin and mostly from national brands and software companies, not local businesses. What has been reported:

• SE Ranking (tested June 3–15, 2026): 97,131 impressions and 1,263 clicks, a 1.30% click-through rate, but “almost no sign-ups.”
• MediaPost (August 28, 2026): one agency saw about a 0.6% click-through rate and zero conversions on roughly 9,000 impressions. Another saw 57 clicks reported by OpenAI but fewer than 20 visits in Google Analytics.
• Search Engine Journal (September 8, 2026): the $9,620 e-commerce test above ran a 0.94% click-through rate, with an estimated return of 3.3× to 6.8× its spend depending on how sales were attributed.

So results range from nothing to promising, and nobody has a reliable local benchmark yet.

What about ads in Google AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot?

ChatGPT is the only AI assistant where you buy the placement directly. The others come through ad accounts you may already have:

• Google AI Overviews. Ads from ordinary Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns can show above or below AI Overviews, and within them in English in the US and 11 other countries. You can’t target that placement or opt out of it, and Google keeps ads out of AI Overviews for sensitive categories like finance and healthcare.
• Microsoft Copilot. Eligible Microsoft Advertising campaigns are automatically opted in to serve in Copilot, and advertisers can’t opt out. Search ads need a logo to be eligible.

None of these put a business inside the AI’s own recommendation, which is part of why SEO isn’t dead: the earned answer still matters most.

Who should try ChatGPT ads now?

A test makes sense for businesses, from restaurants and retailers to trades and law firms, that check most of these boxes:

• You’re in an eligible category, not a restricted one.
• You already track calls and form leads, ideally from paid search, so you have something to compare against.
• You have a landing page that answers the question a customer would be asking ChatGPT.
• You can set aside a capped budget, at least a month at the $25 daily minimum, and treat it as a learning cost.

If you can’t measure leads yet, or your budget is tight, the organic side usually pays back first: getting your listings consistent and your pages clear helps you in ChatGPT, Google and everywhere else at once.

Where we help. We can set up and manage ChatGPT ads, and the Google campaigns that reach AI Overviews, alongside AI search optimization when it makes sense. The account stays in your name, conversion tracking goes in before any spend, and you get a plain report of what the money produced.